Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on November 7, 2008 – 11:59 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Rambler Media, mother company of popular Russian portal Rambler.ru, faces tough times. Their share of web searches has dropped from 15 percent in January to 8 percent now. To make things even worse, Rambler thought to receive $70.1 million in cash from Google for Begun - Rambler’s contextual advertising company - yet the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service refused Google’s application. Rumor has it that a man called Putin inspired the service.
As a result, Rambler Media has to lay-off fifty percent of its staff, Quintura reports. Sources say that divisions responsible for Rambler’s company non-core products will be hit hardest. Examples are telecom provider Rambler Telecom, photo sharing community Rambler-Foto, video sharing community Rambler Vision, and IT news site Ferra.
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Written on October 23, 2008 – 7:38 pm
Mircea Goia, Next Web US Webtipr
Not everybody likes Google, although many of them uses it.
It seems some high power people in Russia don’t like Google either. At least, they don’t like how Google tries to enter in each and every regional market.
This time Google tried to buy the contextul advertising firm Begun (a subsidiary of Rambler.ru search engine and the second biggest player in the russian contextual advertising field). The russian search engine (among the top three in the country) agreed to sell its division to Google for a reported $140 million.
But the authorities (Federal Antimonopoly Service - FAS) said that Kokuna Holdings Limited (owned by Google) failed to provide all the documentation needed to close the deal.
The chief of the FAS Igor Artemyev told Vedomosti, that “Google has not provided accurate and adequate information about the structure of ownership and therefore was refused“.
A source close to shareholders Rambler told Vedomosti that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was not pleased by Google taking over the local market as it did in other markets.
It’s not that hard to believe this rumour considering Mr. Putin’s past actions.
Written on August 29, 2008 – 5:11 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Russia’s largest Internet portal Mail.ru has acquired a 30% stake in its online dating partner Mamba, Quintura reports. They had to pay $15 million for a chunk of the enormous dating service - which offers dating platforms to several big Russian Internet parties.
Mamba has an user base of 10 million people. 1.5 to 2 million of them are looking for the love of their life (or a one night stand) on a daily basis. Together with Loveplanet (which is a destination site), Mamba holds 90 percent of the Russian $21 million dating market.
Not surprisingly, Mamba’s financial numbers are also impressive. The company reported revenues of $9.2 million in the first half of 2008, which meant a 68% percent increase from the first half of 2007.
Mail.ru had to pay the 15 million dollars to Finam, a Moscow-based investment and financial services group that acquired a controlling stake in Mamba in October 2005. It’s their third hit this year, as they recently also sold their stakes in Begun (to Google) and computer game publisher Buka.
There’s interesting twist to this deal
The people at Rambler HQ - that other big Russian web portal - won’t be amused by Mail.ru’s move. Rambler’s dating section uses Mamba’s platform, and accounts for 25 percent of Mamba’s usage. How will they feel about a competitor buying a rather large stake in the same service provider?
If Rambler decides to move its dating section to another platform, the revenue of Mamba could decline by 25 percent. Then Mail.ru will temporarily become a victim of its own deal.
Written on July 18, 2008 – 10:00 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
A few weeks ago I wrote a sarcastic article about Google’s efforts to gain popularity in Russia. Native search engines like Yandex and Rambler dominate this market, and Google obviously has been feeling threatened by that. So in the first week of June, the search giant started a billboard campaign in Moscow. This move looked like it was made out of desperation. Today Google made a more serious effort by acquiring Russian contextual advertising service Begun for 140 million dollars from Rambler. 
Probably to conquer some market share - as it grants them access to 40,000 advertisers and 143,000 partner sites - but could there be a second - more important - reason? Maybe this acquisition has something to do with Project Spaghetti - Google’s plan to generate more advertising revenue from YouTube.
Begun introduced contextual video advertising just last month
As I reported on June 30th, Begun integrated contextual advertising for video content on Rambler’s video sharing community, Rambler Vision. From that day on, 1.3 million visitors per month (and counting) would see the ads. Advertisments are based on the tags and are sold on a CPC bases.
This ad-introducing experience might come in handy when Google integrates video advertisement on YouTube.
YouTube only generates $200 million a year
Because YouTube badly needs a advertising strategy. Last week, the Wall Street Journal got two anonymous sources talking about YouTube’s failing advertisement strategy. The video giant generates 10 billion video views a day, but ‘only’ manages to make $200 million a year from advertising. Thus the Google-owned company might introduce pre and post-roll ads, said the sources to WSJ.
Welcome to the Valley, now let’s make money
You see the connection? Not only will Google gain more popularity in Russia, it has also acquired a company that knows how to make money from ads. Google will gladly welcome these fellas in Silicon Valley to turn YouTube in a profitable business.
Written on June 30, 2008 – 3:28 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Rambler Media, one of Russia’s leading Internet companies (€38 Million in 2007), has announced contextual advertising for video content. Its advertising division - Begun - will integrate Begun.Videocontext on Rambler’s video sharing community, Rambler Vision. That means 1.3 million visitors per month will see the ads.
Each video appearing on Rambler Vision is tagged according to its content and as a result,
advertisements can be displayed beneath relevant videos. Rambler claims to be the first Russian web service to profit from contextual ads, which is remarkable, as online videos attract more Russian viewers than cable TV channels. Begun will sell the ads on a CPC bases.
If you’re a Russian reader, let me set you at ease: you can easily click the ad away.
[Via: Quintura]
Written on April 11, 2008 – 11:02 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Most European search markets are dominated by Google and there seem to be no real local competitors. In Russia however, a fierce battle for the search query’s of the consumers is going on. Yakov Sadchikov from Quintura even mailed me that “the Russian search engines are coming.” Well, I don’t think they will cross any borders, since their main advantage is the local knowledge and adaption to the Cyrillic alphabet. But they sure give Google a hard time on Russian soil.
Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh
First there is Russia’s largest search engine Yandex, the first engine that revealed a billion pages outside the .ru domain. According to ComScore, Yandex is the no. nine search engine globally. They’ve launched their first vertical search engine, Yandex.Auto. A search engine for, you guessed it right, car classified ads. The crawler indexes over half a million listings of used cars from 30 Russian car sites. Search query’s can be specified by gearbox type, brand, color and whatnot. Yakov showed me an example of the results for Lamborghini.
Secondly, the search engine that comes right after Yandex is Rambler. They’re not in the world’s top ten yet, but are doing a good job with 300 million monthly searches and more than 37 million unique users in last February. Revenues of 2007 increased with 125% from 2006 to 69 million dollars.
So this upcoming engine has released a new version which is open to the public on beta.rambler.ru. The differences with the current version are mainly visual, also the focus of Rambler has shifted to vertical search. So there’s a thumbnail next to a search result and four categories - Internet, Top 100, News and Wikipedia - are marked with different colors.
It seems like the Russian search engines are doing the opposite of what Google does, since they’re adding fancy add-ons, while Google still keeps it clean and simple. Maybe they’re right, maybe it’s time for specified and vertical search. Most of us are somewhat used to the complexity of the Web now, so we might as well be able to handle a search engine a bit more complicated than just a white page.
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